There are plans to build a new immigrant prison in Gary Indiana. A “public dialogue” is being organized by councilwoman Lavetta Sparks-Wade, so that the private prison company GEO Group can promote their plans.

We are the public and we CAN’T WAIT TO PARTICIPATE!
We can’t wait to meet and “dialogue” with GEO Officials who, according to councilwoman Lavetta Sparks-Wade, will be present at the public meeting. We can’t wait to meet with GEO’s Senior Vice President, David J. Venturella – who just happens to be former ICE’s Secure Communities Executive Director and Director of the Office of Detention and Removal Operations (EOR), accumulating over 22 years of “experience” with the domestic terrorist organization Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

We know these types of events are bullshit. They pretend this is about a democratic process and public dialogue. Instead, it’s just an opportunity for GEO and sell-out politicians to spread lies and manipulate the public.

We say NO to an immigrant prison! NO to a sham dialogue!

While you profit off our lives, there can be no dialogue
While you terrorize our communities, there can be no dialogue
While you bribe and manipulate, there can be no dialogueNO DIALOGUE WITH THE JAILERS NO Dialogue with the slaveholders! NO Dialogue with corporate state terror!No to an immigrant prison in Gary or anywhere!NO BORDERS, NO CAGES!

GEO officials: We are Shutting You Down!In the mean time, contact the following people and voice your message:

David J. Venturella: Current GEO Group Vice President and Veteran Kidnaping Director with over two decades of experience with the domestict terrorist organization, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Email: dventurella@geogroup.com; Tel: (561) 999-7343 / (561) 893-0101 ext 7343

Moratorium on Deportations Campaign recently held a workshop on immigration reform, border militarization and Obama’s “executive action” on immigration, unpacking some of the ways the Immigrant Rights lobby functions to repress efforts at autonomous self-organization, to disarm and coopt struggles against borders, deportation and detention. It was also an attempt to recenter the conversation, insisting over and over again on the illegitimacy of the settler nation – “we are on occupied lands –how can the concept of citizenship be legitimate?” The workshop was followed by an hourlong discussion on Spanish-language community radio .

The Mexican Embassy in the United States sent out an urgent memo to all the consulates, instructing them to “minimize the impact” of the November 20th protests taking place in the US in solidarity with Ayotzinapa. The story they are selling us is this: the federal government is fighting crime and “making great progress” towards justice. No need to rise up like people are doing all over Mexico; stay calm and return to “normal”.

They want to pacify us and keep us obedient. They want us to believe in their myth of “law and order”. They are afraid.

President Obama is getting ready to announce “administrative relief” for immigrants, the latest show in a long farce that criminalizes and kills migrants in the name of “national security”. The message is this: you should be grateful, we are giving you some crumbs. No need to rise up and organize, stay calm and return to normal.

They want to pacify us and keep us obedient. They want us to believe in their myth of “democracy”. They are afraid.

The United Sates and Mexico are enforcing a social peace that is a social death. This social peace is now called the “War on Drugs”. The US is the patron of this war, and the Mexican state is its accomplice. This is not about fighting the narcos – it is a way to govern through death, disappearance and terror, to govern not in the interests of people but in the interests of capital.

In the name of “fighting crime”, the state and its borders are machines of war. It is a war against indigenous peoples and campesin@s, a war against the poor and against those who reject the rule of the market. More than 30,000 people have been disappeared in Mexico since the US-imposed War on Drugs began in 2005. This war is not just against the students from Ayotzinapa, but against the consciousness they represent. The state disappears those who arm themselves in self-defense against the narcos and government occupation. The state disappears the Yaquis who fight in defense of ancestral waters and the right to exist. The state disappears those defending the lands from resource extraction, those who refuse to acquiesce to their own destruction. The state disappears the women it has displaced to the maquilas. The state disappears all who stand in the way of the neoliberal restructuring of life, those who create autonomy and threaten the interests of multinational corporations. The state disappears migrants across journeys of terror, from Central America to the US Borderlands. The state disappears red, black and brown peoples into prisons, into borders, into graveyards, into the living death of servitude and assimilation. The state disappears us into silence and obedience.

In the killings and disappearances, the state is the author and executor at the service of capital.

All across Mexico, people are rising up against the terror of the state and the corporate interests it represents. Solidarity means rising up with them!

They want us to believe that organized crime and “corrupt public officials” are responsible for the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. 22 local police were arrested, cartel members were captured and now the only missing link is the political figures who are on the run. The message is this: the state is solving the crisis. Each new phase is supposed to reassure us that the government’s investigation is progressing, those guilty will be found and punished with the full force of the law. In the name of this justice, the local population is terrorized: massive militarization, home invasions, arbitrary detentions. Iguala is under siege.

We know much of the evidence used to arrest the cops is fake. We know that some heads will roll to pacify us and return to “normal”. Behind the scenes, the Narcostate is experimenting: the game of power stays the same, while some of the players are changing. And the spectacle of producing the guilty is designed to hide the fact that the state itself has orchestrated the crisis. The investigation is a smokescreen.

It is the state that disappears in a war against indigenous peoples and campesin@s, against all those who rebel and all who are made disposable by the logic of profit. It is the state that governs through disappearance, terror and death. In this war the rural school model keeps alive a form of existence and autonomy that is a form of rebellion. In this war the state wants to disappear not just the students, but the consciousness they represent. But this is not new, and it is not only 43 normalistas, more than 24,000 people have been disappeared since 2005. The state disappears Nestora Salgado and José Manuel Mireles, those who arm themselves in self-defense against the narcos and government occupation. The state disappears Yaqui tribe spokespersons Mario Luna and Fernando Jimenéz for fighting in defense of ancestral waters and the right to exist. The state disappears those defending the lands from resource extraction, those who refuse to acquiesce to their own destruction. The state disappears all who stand in the way of the neoliberal restructuring of life, those who create autonomy and threaten the interests of multinational corporations. The state disappears migrants across journeys of terror, from Central America to the US Borderlands. The state disappears the women it has displaced to the maquilas. The state disappears people into prisons, into borders, into graveyards, into warehouses, into the living death of servitude and assimilation.

In the massacres and disappearances, the state is the author and executor at the service of capital. The US is the patron of this war, and the Mexican state is its accomplice.

Join us on Monday October 27 at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago. We do not come here to deliver a letter or to dialogue with the representatives of power. We don’t come asking for your justice or for your compassion. We come to put you on trial.

Recently, images of migrant prison warehouses on the US-Mexico border have been leaked to the media. These images are grotesque, illustrating the inhumane conditions of incarceration inside warehouses nicknamed “coolers” or “ice boxes”. This is where people who are captured while trying to cross the border are taken by Customs and Border Protection (CPB), one of the branches of Department of Homeland Security (DHS), before being transferred to other detention facilities around the country.http://m.chron.com/news/local/article/Leaked-photos-show-immigrant-children-packed-in-5531953.php

The reactions to these images are of justifiable outrage — people are crammed into cold warehouses that are not fit to house human beings, with no mattresses to sleep on and with no legal rights, no access to health care or to basic needs such as toilet paper. Images of detainees forced to sleep on floors, exposed to frigid temperatures and conditions of exhaustion, have shocked just about everyone who has seen them. Our outrage should not stop us from looking carefully at how the images are being used and how the “crisis” they illuminate is being framed. The incarceration of migrants in inhuman conditions has been an ongoing crisis, and the existence of the coolers has been reported by migrants and advocacy groups for at least 8 years, several lawsuits have been filed, yet there has been no public outcry. Why are these images being leaked, why now? And how is the shock value of these images being used?

The official narrative is framing the “crisis” as a “surge” in “illegal crossings”, a “humanitarian crisis” as Obama has called it — which is being used to justify opening up more and better detention facilities. The logic is this: a wave of crossings is underway, straining existing detention and enforcement capacity, resulting in overcrowding and dehumanizing conditions of captivity. Once represented in this way, the crisis demands a solution: more detention centers, more agents, more social workers, more capacity to capture and lock up people. The outrage over these images is not translating to a concern over the conditions that lead to forced migration, or to an outrage over the enforcement structures that imprison and dehumanize specific populations merely for trying to relocate whenever and wherever they need to. The outrage over these images is not translating into a demand to end the practice of detention and to delegitimize laws that illegalize people; it is slowly but relentlessly translating into a call for more and “better” prisons, and for more effective border enforcement.

The sudden visibility of the coolers is accompanied by a total mystification of the historical and current conditions within which they operate: the laws and procedures by which migrants are made to be “illegal” in their crossing. What is deliberately repressed is any understanding of the conditions that produce mass displacement, of the laws that confer to those displaced the status of “unauthorized” and “deportable” people, the legal fallacies that make detention an exceptional form of imprisonment and that make migrants an exceptional category of captive, or the ways DHS and its agencies operate in conjunction with local police forces and the non profit sector to reproduce and expand enforcement. In our analysis, these factors are the crisis — not that people are crossing the border, but that they are forced to cross in dangerous ways, that they arrested and incarcerated for doing so. Once these aspects become repressed, once migrant captivity becomes normalized, the crisis is narrated as though it is caused by the actions of the migrants themselves — the migrants are seen as “surging” the border, straining the capacity of the state, creating a “problem” that the state must now scramble to solve.

The “camp” at Lackland Air Force Base opened in May (with a capacity to detain 1,200 children); detention “camps” at Fort Still in Oklahoma (capacity 1,200) and Ventura County Navel Base in California (capacity 575) just opened the second week of June. They are talked about as “shelters”, places where thousands of children can be rescued, where there is singing and there are art lessons and language lessons, where children have beds and armies of social workers helping them, and where local economies can receive a much-needed boost as an added perk.http://newsok.com/immigrant-children-expected-to-arrive-at-fort-sill-by-the-weekend/article/4906856

The sudden media visibility of child detention is stunning, with reporters being invited to tour these three new facilities and to report on the “improved conditions” they offer children. This is highly unusual given the history of total secrecy surrounding child detention, which has been shaped in its current form by the passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2002. It is also unusual given that there is still a media black-out of other child detention facilities in the border region, and still total secrecy surrounding the 68 child detention centers around the country that are managed by social service Non Profits. These secret child prisons have been operating since 2004, incarcerating some 4,600 children on any given day. Thousands of children are captured in border warehouses operated by CPB, then shipped to centers around the country administered by NGO’s under the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and now many are shipped back to the new border camps within Department of Defense facilities. All these facilities, and the organizational bureaucracies that oversee them, are integrated via sophisticated software borrowed from supply chain management solutions (similar to what Wal-Mart uses for just-in-time commodity delivery). This is a just-in-time detention system that updates numbers of captured children and “vacancies” into a national database on a daily basis, giving DHS and the Office of Refugee Resettlement the capacity to capture, ship, track and transfer over 47,000 children since October 2013.

We are urgently in need of an analysis of the very complicated child detention economy, and of the ways the service sector has profited from it. Instead, we get media “coverage” that replays over and over again the images of the terrible coolers vs the nice-looking camps. We also get accounts that the children are mostly from Central American countries (primarily Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador), and have endured long and arduous journeys. Many are ill, traumatized, injured. Many are crossed in large groups with no adults accompanying them, and left in the desert or on the side of the road for Customs and Border Protection (CPB) to apprehend them. In this narrative CPB is not arresting these children, they are rescuing them; in this narrative, the camps are not prisons, they are emergency shelters. But rescue them from whom, and shelter from what?

The crisis is not blamed on the children, nor is it blamed on the increased enforcement against immigrants — because, as a recent CNN article reminds us, “Americans are known around the world as a good and compassionate people — with a soft spot for children.” (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/opinion/navarrette-immigrant-children/) . In the narrative of the media and of politicians from Obama to Jan Brewer, the blame falls on the parents, who are represented in subtle ways as deviant, immoral and deceitful. In a manner that reminds us of the demonization of poor Black mothers as “welfare queens” , as degenerate women who use their children to rob the state by claiming “bogus” benefits, migrants are now represented as trying to take advantage of the soft spot that the US presumably has for children: in trying to “cheat” the system and use children for “bogus” asylum claims, migrants endanger their children.

In the name of saving the children, the logic for opening up three prisons for immigrant children in three different military bases goes unquestioned as a necessary improvement. The logic of the humanitarian crisis demands a humanitarian intervention — historically this paves the way for punitive enforcement and military solutions under the guise of protecting the victims. But we have to remember these children are prisoners, and are only a few of the thousands caught in a child prison system that spans dozens of facilities around the country. And once they leave these prisons, children remain in deportation proceedings and the state continues to pursue actions against them. Once they leave the prisons, DHS is also in possession of their biometric data, as well as the biometrics of their “sponsoring families” — generally, their parents and other relatives who are also themselves undocumented — and fully capable of enforcing the deportation proceedings against them. Meanwhile, all immigrants under deportation proceedings — children and adults — have no access to due process and no right to representation. Cynically, some media articles suggest that passing immigration reform is the only way to improve the situation of detained children, because the current reform proposals offer access to legal representation for some of the children. The articles do not mentioned that immigration reform proposals focus on enforcement, and are centered on expanding criminalization, detention and deportation overall.

The detention system is undergoing a breathtaking expansion in military bases, NGO-operated “secure housing” and in government solicitations for new “family-friendly” prisons to be built and operated by the private sector. We are told this is necessary in response to the crisis of immigrants “flooding” or “surging” the border. Resisting this expansion will mean fighting to reframe the ways the crisis is represented; it means fighting to prove that enforcement against immigrants will not decrease, conditions will not improve, and the criminalization of migrants will not slow down by expanding the state’s capacity to incarcerate them. The system is not “broken” — the “humanitarian crisis” has been created in order to prepare us to cheer for its expansion.

http://chicagomdc.tumblr.com/Announcing the 2014 Bullshit Organization of the Year Awards:
June 5, 4:30PM – 6:30 PM
Chicago: Meet at 55 E Jackson St.

We will march carrying a giant, custom-made poop award sculpture and plungers between the headquarters of two NGO’s (ICIRR and SEIU) and two prisons (MCC and ICE headquarters).

Why a Bullshit Organization of the Year Award? On May Day 2014, several NGO’s cooperated with police, resulting in the arrest of two activists: Anne-Meredith Wooton and Jose “Ze” Garcia, who is also currently under deportation proceedings. Join us to support Anne-Meredith and Ze as they face the legal consequences of the arrest. But this incident is part of a larger pattern of direct police cooperation, of silencing dissenting voices, of co-optation and tokenism. Powerful, well-funded and politically-connected NGO’s are not in the business of challenging the status quo. They are not invested in systemic and radical social change. Instead, they work to prevent communities from self-organizing beyond the logic of corporate patronage and electoral politics. They co-opt and police emancipatory movements, undermining the collective potential for political expression, kettling our bodies and the social imagination. This action is part of a larger effort to build solidarity and community self-defense against the abuses of sell-out NGO’s.

Participate in National Poop Month Against Sell-Out NGO’s:
June 2014

Ever been bullied by a “peace marshal”? Ever been silenced because you are not a good “poster child” for the movement? Ever witnessed police-NGO cooperation, or the ways corporate foundations and electoral campaigns drive the “social justice” agenda? Take action — large or small — against the NGO Industrial complex! June is National Poop Month Against Sell-out NGO’s, a call to communities everywhere to expose the ways powerful NGO’s have installed themselves as “leaders” of social movements, while co-opting and selling us out!
Take action in your community! Conduct your own Bullshit Awards! Write an open letter, organize a public meeting or event. Develop a resolution to stop working with orgs that cooperate with police. Reach out to rank and file members or small organizations who may disagree with the leadership of large coalition NGO’s; promote critique and resistance from the inside! Connect with others to support non-hierarchical, autonomous organizing beyond the NGO complex. Contact us to share your action ideas and reports.

Jueves, 8 de Mayo, 6-8 PM
La Misión Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
3442 W. 26th St. (La Villita)
Chicago IL
—————————-
Hear testimony about the ways SEIU and ICIRR coopted Mayday and then used marshals and police repression against autonomous groups. Kettling, harassment, bullying and police collaboration resulted in two arrests, including one organizer who is known to be in deportation proceedings. This is not an isolated incident. Hear a detailed report of how ICIRR has been using the police against undocumented organizers who expose the ways they capitalize upon and endanger the very communities they supposedly represent.

This is not an invitation to a “neutral dialogue”. It is an invitation to build community self-defense against these tactics. Join Moratorium on Deportations Campaign to confront a top-down, authoritarian and sellout NGO system that is threatened by dissent and autonomous organizing.

A few days ago, fourteen people ended their Hunger Strike for Health Care with a small victory: hospitals began negotiations, issued small promises to not turn away patients who are undocumented and uninsured. Yesterday, Sarai Rodriguez passed away while waiting for promises to turn into actions. Although the hunger strike ended, the struggle for Health Care continues!!!

Join us in supporting the Hunger Strike for Health Care campaign as it begins a new stage of the struggle.Theuy are asking for solidarity at a funeral procession to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the one that denied care to Sarai Rodriguez. We will march to the hospital and stay there all night and all day Monday.

ROUTE:
*Walk 26th st – Left on Kedzie- right on Ogden (Rest at Douglas Park)
*Continue to Ogden and Damen. Short vigil at John H Stroger Hospital for Sarai Rodriguez.
*Walk to Chicago Ave
*Walk to Northwestern Memorial Ave 251 E Huron

Sarai Rodriguez (currently at John H Stroger Hospital) is one of the fourteen patients whose loved ones participated in the Hunger Strike for Health Care. Today, her doctors and family have notified us that she is dying. Hunger strikers are enraged and blame Northwestern Memorial Hospital, who refused to evaluate her for the transplant list. Area hospitals have begun a dialogue with the hunger strikers as they have done during last year’s hunger strike, but this comes too late for Sarai and her family. “Last year they made promises, and then continued to turn people away — because of this, Sarai Rodriguez is dying” stated Father Landaverde, one of the organizers of the Hunger Strike for Health Care. “We hold Northwestern Memorial Hospital directly responsible for killing her”.

A delegation of three Hunger Strikers participated in a two-hour with representatives from Christ Memorial Hospital today. Participants in the meeting include Tony Mooney Gardner, Manager of Public Affairs at Christ Medical Center and Chief Operating Officer of Christ Medical Center, Michael D Wilkins. Here is what they agreed to verbally, while refusing to put anything in writing:

1. Communicate with Dr David Ansel of Rush Hospital who is leading the effort to create a roundtable along with the other transplant teams from UIC ,Northwestern, Rush and Loyola; this is intended to coordinate effort and find solutions so that all undocumented and uninsured people can be evaluated for the transplant waitlists
2. Establish and maintain communication with the patients on our list to accomplish every point that we will agree: to conduct evaluations for all of them
3. There will be no requirement for legal documentation for any patient to be accepted by Christ Medical Center for evaluation to be put on the transplant waitlist
4. There be no requirement for insurance for any patient to be apply to be evaluated for the waitlist; the hospital has significant financial support for people without insurance , and that can be used for any person who applies for medical care at Christ, especially those for evaluations for transplants.

Meanwhile, outside, the rest of the group were picketing on the public sidewalk. Oak Lawn police interfered with and positioned themselves on the sidewalk directly in our way, us making the path incredibly narrow. They immediately arrested one picketer who allegedly had “contact” with an officer; he is now released, though he is being charged with battery.

Hunger strikers relocate to Christ Medical Center and refuse to leave until their demands are met. They are calling for solidarity! Please join them if you can: Wednesday, 10AM 4440 West 95th Street Oak Lawn, Illinois

If you cannot be there in person, your support is still very needed! Call Christ Medical Center, 9AM -1PM. 630-929-6601 – Stephanie Johson, Director of Public Affairs; ask that the President meet the demands of the hunger strikers